7/23/2012 I know that sounds absolutely horrible, but this comes after a beautiful three-week visit with my 20-year-old. She came home to unwind from her life in the Bay Area, which frankly is better than my life. She spent her time flitting from friend to friend, hanging out with me, and reconnecting with her somewhat-troubled-teen-whom-this-blog-is-about-sister.
She only had one bad day—after a lunch with a high school friend who’s parents are very wealthy and give her everything on a silver platter, including wonderful trips to Europe and Israel and South America that should be going to my daughter. She was angry and miserable after THAT lunch and she was mad at me for hours. What made it worse was that the girl doesn’t appreciate it, didn’t have any interesting stories about her travels, and was mad that her mother was delayed in putting money into her checking account. This didn’t go over well with my daughter, who busts her ass in pizzeria.
Older daughter is doing well, though, but her ADD is rocking. It was nearly impossible to have a sane conversation with her—between her random thoughts, her texting and phone calls, and seeing shiny things—I thought I would go out of my mind. At the same time, this is who she has always been, how I’ve always known her. Her mind working too fast for her mouth, and I love her for it. She’s still funny and delightful and lights up the room.
Little sister, not so troubled anymore, still loves to dig the knife in my back. Even though she’s doing remarkably well in her life, she has no trouble bringing up periods of time that make me sick to think about them. Big sister thinks it’s perfectly fine to talk about the bad things in the past because that’s part of their lives and made them who they are (so wise and mature, I guess she thinks). I, on the other hand, want to forget the bad shit and see only that we’ve overcome it—somehow.
So as we were walking into Goodwill, where we go to look for random treasures, my younger daughter mentioned an ugly time and some ugly people that crossed our paths when she was about 14 or 15, and I literally got nauseous. I asked her to please not mention those times because it upsets me, and it caused a rift for the next hour. I held it together, but when we got back in the car, I started to cry uncontrollably.
I cried for so many reasons all at the same time. The cliched “flood gates” simply opened up and I couldn’t stop myself. I cried because I can’t afford real shopping sprees, cried for the mistakes I made in raising my daughters, cried for making them live with my boyfriend whom they ended up hating, cried for being too strict–then cried for being too lenient, cried for not having college money, cried for hating my job, cried because their father sucks, cried for living in such a hot city that they both hate, cried and cried and cried. You name it, I cried about it.
Those precious girls tried to cheer me up, console me, reassure me that those times were in the past and it’s okay—they love me more than anything in the world. They told me that I gave them good values—that they know how to work hard and be independent and make decisions for themselves. My younger daughter assured me that I couldn’t have stopped her from doing the things she did. She manipulated me, snuck around, kept secrets, and was bad all on her own. I was a good mother, they both told me.
See what I mean? Can you understand why I wish I never had them? I love them so much, wanted them from the minute I knew they were in my body. We’ve been through so much in their 18 and 20 years and now I wish I could take it all back. I brought them into this world knowing it wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t perfect, my situation was wrong for parenting, and I was a poor teacher. I brought them into this world because I wanted them and nothing more. That was selfish and these amazing people deserve so much more and I can never give them what I think they deserve.
When I took my angel girl to the airport yesterday, I about lost my mind. I cried all morning before the drive, most of the drive down, then really turned on the waterworks when we got out of the car to say goodbye. I can’t take this motherhood thing. It’s too hard to keep saying farewell, until next time. I can’t do it anymore!